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Low-Cost Water Is Hard Sell in Delhi Colony

Bunty Kumar gets drinking water from automatic vending machines in Sawda Ghevra, a resettlement colony on the outskirts of New Delhi.Credit Vishnu Varma

SAWDA GHEVRA, India — In October last year, the resettlement colony of Sawda Ghevra, tucked away in the northwestern outskirts of India’s capital, became the site of an urban experiment.

The colony lacking well-established water pipelines, residents have for years depended on the water tankers supplied once a day by the Delhi Jal Board, the municipal body.

So the residents were surprised at seeing the commissioning of a decentralized drinking water facility along with 11 automatic vending machines, also known as water A.T.M.s, that provided water on a pay-per-use basis in their colony. Residents could bring their own canisters and fill up as much as they wanted, paying the equivalent of about two United States cents per liter with rechargeable prepaid smart cards.

The water A.T.M.s were a supplemental effort on the part of the Delhi Jal Board and Sarvajal, a social enterprise supported by the Piramal Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the Piramal Group, to ensure that the residents of the colony had round-the-clock access to clean drinking water.

Yet six months after the pilot project began, the response from residents has been lukewarm: Only 950 households have paid the $1.70 fee for a smart card among the estimated 8,500 households in the colony.

“The pilot has been successful in showing that, yes, it works and people are accessing water,” Anuj Sharma, chief operating officer of Sarvajal, said in a telephone interview. “But it has not reached the desired level of acceptance.”

Sawda Ghevra was formed in 2005 to accommodate people who were relocated from slums across New Delhi to make room for infrastructure development before the Commonwealth Games in 2010. A majority of the colony’s residents are day laborers.

Most residents are not interested in paying for water, even though it is affordable for them, mainly because they already have free drinking water supplied by the Delhi Jal Board tankers, and the Delhi Jal Board, which has invested no money in this project, has little incentive to try to increase use.

Sanjam Chima, a Delhi Jal Board spokeswoman, said the idea was not to make money on the water project or to make it successful but to provide residents with a supplemental model of safe drinking water.

But residents’ reluctance to pay for water has not discouraged Lt. Gov. Najeeb Jung, who leads the administration in Delhi in the absence of a state government, which was suspended after the chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal, resigned in February. In late April, Lieutenant Governor Jung declared that the pay-per-use water system should be replicated in other resettlement colonies in the city because, he said, it is a sustainable model, though the current usage by residents is far from the breaking-even point for Sarvajal, which runs the project.

Photo

An automatic vending machine operated by Sarvajal, a social enterprise.Credit Vishnu Varma

On one recent afternoon, Inderjit Halder, a 19-year-old student, and two of his friends filled water from a Sarvajal kiosk using a smart card they had received from their coaching institute. But Mr. Halder said that at home, he still used the water from the tankers for all purposes. “The water from the tanker is clean and good,” he said. “It is free, and it comes near my house.”

Illegal bore wells constructed by a large number of households dot the alleys of the colony and serve as a lifeline for residents who use it for nondrinking purposes. Previously, fights over water broke out between residents, but disputes have disappeared now that people can get water from tankers.

Then two years ago, the Delhi Jal Board invited tenders from private enterprises to set up a decentralized filtration pilot facility so that the colony residents could get drinking water at any time.

Sarvajal, which has five years of experience in supplying purified drinking water in India’s rural areas, won the contract. It cost Sarvajal $68,200 to build the water purification plant at Sawda Ghevra, which filters ground water.

Each water A.T.M., which is powered by solar panels, costs $2,600 to build and install. An LED screen gives the user details such as the amount of water that the customer has taken and the balance amount left in the account. If users find they need to refill their card, they call Sarvajal to arrange for payment.

Each water A.T.M. holds a maximum of 500 liters, or about 130 gallons, and whenever water dips below a certain limit, the officials at the plant get an automatic message on their cellphones.

In October, the plant began operating, along with 11 A.T.M. kiosks that supplied water. Four more water A.T.M.s were installed in the colony in March.

Sarvajal officials say their job is not to make money but to make the project sustainable in the long run. Sarvajal now dispenses about 3,000 liters a day even though the plant’s daily capacity is about 20,000 liters.

More residents are likely to use the A.T.M.s in the coming days as the hot summer season intensifies, said Mr. Sharma, the Sarvajal chief operating officer.

Mr. Sharma added that by 2015, the company expected to see residents use 8,000 liters a day — a target that Sarvajal officials have set as their break-even point. Eventually, he said, residents will realize that it makes sense to buy the extremely inexpensive water being offered at all hours, instead of waiting for the tankers to show up once a day.

“People’s ability to realize buying water is not always a rational or practical decision,” Mr. Sharma said. “It is often an emotional decision.”

Correction: May 28, 2014An earlier version of this post misstated the title of Najeeb Jung, the current head of the Delhi administration. He is the lieutenant governor of Delhi, not a lieutenant general.

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